Love Your Neighbors as Yourself

Except to love each other

“Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

“Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” (Romans 13:8-14 ESV)

We, as believers in and as followers of Jesus Christ, are to be people who (agape) love one another. And that word has, at its core, moral purity, uprightness, godliness, honesty, faithfulness, and obedience to our Lord and to his commandments (New Covenant). For the word means to prefer to love, and to prefer what God prefers. So, as followers of Christ, we prefer to live through Christ, and to choose his choices for our lives, and to obey them in his power, strength, and wisdom, to the glory and praise of God.

Now we are not under the Old Covenant liturgical, ceremonial, sacrificial, purification, and dietary laws and restrictions, including the requirement of all males to be circumcised. But we who believe in Jesus Christ are not lawless, for Jesus died to deliver us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works (Titus 2:11-14). And he died to deliver us out of our addiction to sin so that we will now walk in obedience to his commands (Luke 9:23-26; Acts 26:18).

So, if we love God and if we love one another with this kind of love, then we are not going to sin against them deliberately, and especially not habitually and premeditatedly. We will not be those who repeatedly and deliberately commit adultery against our spouses. And even lusting after another is adultery in the eyes of the Lord, and so is viewing pornography or movies with sexual situations in them and lusting after the actors, including what usually transpires as a result of this lusting which is often self-gratification.

And we will not deliberately and habitually sin against God and against other humans in any way, for love does no wrong to a neighbor or to a friend or to a family member or to a spouse or to a stranger, etc. So this agape love, if put into practice in our lives, is the fulfilling of the law. And Paul said something similar in Romans 8 where he said that God condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk, not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

So, yes, we are not under the Old Covenant liturgical and ceremonial laws, but we are not lawless. We still have to obey the Lord and his commands to us under the New Covenant. But we are not judged on the basis of our perfection, but on the basis of what Jesus did for us on that cross and on our love response to the Lord. For, by the grace of God, and in the power of God, we are now to walk no longer according to the flesh but now in walks of obedience to our Lord in holy living and in the forsaking of our sins.

And then we need to understand that our salvation from sin and hope of eternal life with God are conditional based upon our walks of obedience to the Lord and to his commands, in practice, and on us dying to sin and making righteousness our practice, by the grace of God, in the power of God. For Jesus died to deliver us out of our slavery to sin so that we will now serve him with our lives, not so that we can continue living in sin without punishment while promising ourselves eternal life with God in heaven.

So we need to wake up from our slumber if we are spiritually asleep or if we are drifting off to sleep spiritually thinking that how we live our lives does not matter for eternity. And we need to be students of the Scriptures who study them in their context and we will see that giving lip service to God alone will not grant us eternity with God. We must be dying to sin and walking in obedience to his commands in his power. And all sinful practices must be put away from our lives, including all listed above.

None of us lives to himself

Although the context of these following words is that of differences of beliefs and opinions and practices with regard to the food we should or should not eat, and with regard to days in the week, and whether or not one day should be regarded as more sacred than another, and how we should not judge one another on the basis of these differences of opinion, I believe the following words fit well with the Scriptures above, too. But in the context above we are free to make judgments with regard to matters of sin and righteousness.

“For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.” (Romans 14:7-9 ESV)

My Sheep  

An Original Work / June 24, 2012  

Based off John 10:1-30 NIV

My sheep hear me. They know me.

They listen to my voice and obey.

I call them and lead them.

They know my voice, so they follow me.

They will never follow strangers.

They will run away from them.

The voice of a stranger they know not;

They do not follow him.

So, I tell you the truth that

I am the gate, so you enter in.

Whoever does enter

Will find forgiveness and will be saved.

Nonetheless whoever enters

Not by the gate; other way,

He is the thief and a robber.

Listen not, the sheep to him.

Oh, I am the Good Shepherd,

Who laid his own life down for the sheep.

I know them. They know me.

They will live with me eternally.

The thief only comes to steal and

Kill and to destroy the church.

I have come to give you life that

You may have it to the full… 

They know my voice, so they follow me.

https://vimeo.com/114938263